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Kiwi computing infrastructure provider Revera has today announced it has launched a dedicated Microsoft Azure-enabled platform, called Apollo, providing a single ecosystem to mix and match client workloads across Revera’s in-country Azure-enabled cloud platform and Microsoft Azure platforms.

Last year Revera teamed up with Microsoft engineers from the US to build Apollo to Microsoft Cloud OS Network reference architecture, providing compatibility that ensures client apps can be deployed on either Apollo or Microsoft Azure, without extra development.

The company says the newly available in-country Azure-enabled services is good news for local businesses and government agencies whose data sovereignty and security policies preclude wholesale adoption of public cloud offerings.

Revera’s head of innovation Keith Archibald says public and private cloud services were on everyone’s radar, but consuming public cloud services was problematic for organisations unprepared to accept overseas-based data housing, performance vagaries and security that didn’t measure up to their own standards.

“Hybrid cloud architectures will define the future of IT service provision,” Archibald says. “Clients expect to work in a multi-cloud world, but still value dealing with a single partner who can guide workload management and optimise configuration.

“We don’t need to sell anyone the benefits of Azure. But where we help is with interconnected platforms and tools that provide the best of both worlds: a blend of public cloud services and private, locally based options in one ecosystem,” he says.

“To get here, we’ve invested in command and control functions that provide access to a catalogue of services, manage cost and consumption, and provide a consistent user experience.”

Brent Kendrick, Microsoft New Zealand’s director for small business and partners, says he welcomes the platform launch, affirming that Revera Apollo ‘supports Microsoft’s drive to provide customers with the best of public and private cloud services’.

“Cloud adoption is a question of efficiency, and the best answer involves aspects of the Azure public cloud and our Cloud OS Network partners’ in-country cloud,” Kendrick says.

Archibald says Revera’s Azure-enabled service Apollo would appeal to local businesses with international connections. “Flexibility is key, and customers can decide where in the world they want to keep their data and manage workloads.”

He says the partnership with Microsoft was part of a shift to reshape Revera as a cloud services provider.

“The vast majority of growth is in the cloud and we’ve put ourselves right in the middle of everything our customers are asking for,” Archibald says.

“Historically, we’ve operated further down the stack, at the computing infrastructure and platform layers. We’re still strong there, and our Homeland data centres and utility compute continue to function as the building blocks of cloud services.

“But the plan was never to stop there, and new investment is driving our reinvention as a cloud services provider. So, more than simply corral raw capacity and manage its performance, we’ve moved up the stack, developed a portfolio of new on-demand services, wired in public cloud offerings, and overlaid a smart management console for customers and resellers to get going quickly and tie everything together,” he says.

“So it’s an entirely new proposition – a fundamental shift that is crystallised in our new company strapline – cloud services provider. Our old company tag, high-integrity computing infrastructure, wasn’t going to do justice to our new form.”